Review by Gabriel
Winner of the 2009 NSW Premier’s Award, the Prime Minister’s Award for Fiction, and the subject of numerous glowing reviews, The Boat is definitely one of the Australian books of the year. Its critical success is doubly extraordinary for being the debut work of a young author, Nam Le, and a short story anthology, a medium that is typically overshadowed by novels in awards season. Are all the stories in The Boat perfect? No. Is it a damn promising start from a young writer? Definitely.
Le’s stories are consistently readable and compelling. He writes clearly and evocatively, although I’m not sure that I could differentiate his style from many other modern authors. Perhaps he will develop a more distinctive voice in time.
He demonstrates laudable confidence and ambition in tackling a breath of cultures and experiences. He has a good understanding of the cultures he depicts, but the stories in Western or Vietnamese settings seem more authentic, not surprising considering the author’s heritage.
His characters are often faced with circumstances that reveal the fundamentals of their lives. They are distinct and fully conceived, though not always sympathetic or believable. Perhaps the best way to illustrate the diversity of subject and, to be honest, quality, is to look at each of the seven stories.
Love and Honour and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice
The opening story of the anthology is by far the best, setting a standard that the other stories frankly fail to live up to. The details of the narrator’s life seem to match closely with the author’s own biographical details, and most readers will probably assume that this story is an exploration of Le’s relationship with his own father. Regardless of its factual basis, it is raw, honest and moving. It communicates the weight of the past, the gulf between parents and their children, and the impossibility of expressing the complexity of familial relationships. It is also masterfully structured with the perfect amount of ambiguity.
Cartagena
The story of a child assassin in the slums of Colombia. In Cartagena, Le attempts to communicate the brutalisation of children by their environment. He does this by contrasting his characters childish emotions with the shocking violence of their daily lives. Ultimately, it falls flat. His protagonist is a blend of naivety and ruthlessness that comes across as unconvincing. Having seen the excellent movie City of God, which deals with a similar subject in Brazil, Cartagena also struck me as cliché.
Meeting Elise
Another of the stronger works in the collection. An aging New York artist attempts to reconcile with the daughter he hasn’t seen since she was a baby. Le manages to make the protagonist variously repellent and sympathetic. A compelling portrait of a flawed and authentic character.
Halflead Bay
Reminded me of a Tim Winton novel. Set in a small beach side community, a teenage boy struggles with his mother’s illness, and courts trouble in the form of a local girl. I enjoyed the family relationships, but found the rest of the drama overdone.
Hiroshima
I appreciated Hiroshima for its unconventional structure, which perfectly captures the confusion of the child protagonist. In war time Japan, Mayako tries to suppress her loneliness for her family with nationalist propaganda. The story is made even more poignant by the fact that her yearning is destined to be left tragically unfulfilled.
Tehran Calling
Flat out didn’t like this. An American woman whines about a break-up while her friend struggles for women’s rights against the brutal Iranian regime. Could anyone be as ignorant and self-absorbed as the protagonist of this story? If you can believe it, she does something even worse at the end. Is it a comment on sheltered Western attitudes? If so, it didn’t make for an enjoyable read.
The Boat
It’s an interesting tactic putting the titular story at the end. I was really looking forward to this, as I was expecting it to be about the wonderfully complex father from the first story, and his escape as a refugee from Vietnam. I was a little bit let down, then, when I found that it focused on a 16 year old girl. I was even more let down by the slow start, bland character and predictable conclusion. While the subject pretty much guaranteed a suspenseful story, and there were glimpses of brilliance, it failed to reach the heights I hoping for. Still, it’s something of an Important Story at the moment, and will hopefully inspire some people to imagine the circumstances faced by modern boat people.
Overall, I have probably been overly critical of this collection. While it has its flaws, it is both enjoyable and effecting. Furthermore, it is it is evident that the author is challenging himself to create something unique with each story. This ambition guarantees that great things can be expected of Le, and I’ll be following his work with interest.
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